After and before*

The previous post showed a couple of Mexican hat flower heads, Ratibida columnifera, that I noticed on January 2nd had sprung up in the median of Morado Circle. Although most of the flowers on the plants were fresh, I found a small number that had been there long enough (perhaps a lot longer) to go to seed and begin to decay, as you see above. I also saw some specimens that were still on their way to flowering, like the one on the sinuous and aesthetically pleasing stalk shown below.

Click to enlarge.

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* Our strong conception of time progressing from past to future almost always leads us to say before and after, so I thought I should give equal time—well, hardly equal—to after and before. I could also have written the post with all its words in reverse order, but that would have been a contretemps.

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I’d thought of explaining in my text how that background came to be grey, but I decided to wait and see if anyone asked. Bang: the first comment, yours, asked. These Mexican hats were growing on either edge of a median just inches away from pavement. I aimed at the plants sideways to make that road surface into an out-of-focus grey background.

I know some photographers carry neutral cards or even photographic prints to use as backgrounds, but I never do that. In this case my background was man-made, but usually I go for the sky or dark trees or some other natural thing to serve as an amorphous background.

I’m sorry to play math teacher on you, but 0 is an even integer. The definition of an even integer is an integer that leaves no remainder when divided by two, so 0 fits the definition. Another way to look at it is that if you start with an even integer and subtract 2 you get the next lowest even integer, so 8, 6, 4, 2, then 0, –2, –4, etc.. Perhaps you were thinking that 0 is neither positive nor negative. That’s a true statement.

As for numbers that are neither odd nor even, a fraction like 3/4 fits the bill, as do irrational numbers like the square root of two, and transcendental numbers like π and e.

True. A concept I sincerely hope isn’t true, or at least, is optional. I have found one life exhausting and difficult enough. Although to be fair, it is getting easier as I get older and learn better how to lighten up.

I had a couple of bad decades and the suggestion that once I made it to the finish line I might have to start all over again was seriously disheartening. That is all past now and I can think, hm, that might be kind of fun. If only you could take the lessons learned with you. Or choose. My friend wants to come back as a duck because they are at home on land, water, and in the air.

Both of these images make clear that simplicity can be dramatic. In a forced choice, I’d have to take the sinuous stalk, but the first would be near the top of my list of favorite desiccating plants.

I think I remember you mentioning that the Tvetens sometimes use a black background card. For their purposes, I suppose it’s fine, but I do appreciate the fact that you don’t use such things. I’m sure it makes it harder to get a decent background at times, but just like before and after, foreground and background belong together.

I didn’t know that first definition of “contretemps,” even though it’s right there, in the word itself.

Given the large number of Mexican hat plants we have in Austin, over the years I’ve taken many pictures of the seed heads as they dry out and decompose, and also quite a few of new flower heads as they form. For whatever reason, I haven’t shown many pictures of those stages here, probably because the flower heads with their bright rays command so much more attention.

When it comes to using a black card as a background, I probably mentioned Marshall Enquist, who regularly did so to make it easier to see the details of the species in Wildflowers of the Texas Hill Country. It makes sense for a field guide, but I’m aspiring to other things.

That first definition of contretemps is the one I originally knew, given its French components. In an earlier version of this post I’d said that writing the words backwards would be counter-productive; then I countered that with a fancier word from French.

You reminded me that at the beginning of a course students would sometimes ask me if I grade on a curve. My standard answer answer was that a straight line is a curve.

I can see how your imagination would impute enough weight to the nascent flower head in the second picture to cause the stem to bend. In reality, though, the stems of that plant are rather wiry, and at least some of them seem to have a tendency to curve that way.

In the 1950s and ’60s a popular American television show was named Kids Say the Darndest Things. Your littlies seem to be following in that tradition. “Afore” reminds me of Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore.

There’s always a good time to listen to that,
Even while photographing a Mexican hat.

The word doff originated as a contraction of do off. It reminds me that as children when there was a disputed or ambiguous play in a game someone would yell “Do over.” Somehow that never evolved to “Dover.”